Currently, Title 42 is the only thing stopping Joe Biden from abandoning any pretense that the U.S. has a southern border. The invaders are lining up and ready to roll. The hordes we saw in the first two years of the Biden administration will shrink to insignificance compared to what’s about to come. However, to the extent significant numbers are drawn by the promise of free public education for their children, getting the Supreme Court to reverse a decision mandating free public education for illegal alien children or amending the 14th Amendment might make America much less enticing.

Lt. Col. Allen West (ret.) knows how bad things are as we face a growing influx of invaders. He begins with a quotation from Cicero:

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. -- Roman Statesman, Marcus Tullius Cicero

West describes the administration’s lies about a “secure” border and a “90% decrease in illegal immigration.” These lies work only if one redefines the English language, which is what leftists always do. Democrats believe these people will hand them permanent political power. Therefore, they’re not “illegal,” and everything is copacetic.

This is what Joe Biden is doing to our country.

We should have our military at the border stopping the imminent invasion coming later this week when Title 42 lifts.

This is already unsustainable and is a true national security crisis! https://t.co/l2y4zPqaVC

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greeneрџ‡єрџ‡ё (@RepMTG) May 8, 2023

The answer, writes West, is the ballot box:

So, what is our recourse? Frederick Douglass uttered it once upon a time in a speech given on 15 November 1867, “A man’s rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box, and the cartridge box. Let no man be kept from the ballot box because of his color. Let no woman be kept away from the ballot box because of her sex.” Douglass was then addressing this issue towards the very same political party that still seeks to undermine our individual rights…the Democrat party. We are losing in the courts, and the leftists are angered that they lost the Supreme Court. We must reassert election integrity policies and legislation to restore the ballot box. And we must never allow these maniacal leftists to disarm us so that we cannot defend ourselves by way of the cartridge box.

I always support the ballot box over any alternatives. There’s a problem with this solution, though. You and I know that the Republican Party (as opposed to conservatives) wants illegal aliens as much as Democrats do, presumably as cheap labor. We’ve also seen that the Republican party has no interest in election integrity, which means Republicans like the election outcomes we’re getting. They receive lots of donor cash and have no responsibility. It’s possible that, if we turn out in droves for the election, we’ll win, but it’s a gamble. However, there is an alternative.

We can fight for the Supreme Court to reverse Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982), or we can begin the process of amending the 14th Amendment to block a toxic leftist Supreme Court interpretation of that statute. Let me explain.

Preliminarily, here’s what the 14th Amendment says in section one:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. (Emphasis mine)

In the Plyler case, Texas argued that it was not required to expend taxpayer funds to educate children who are illegal aliens because they were not within the state’s jurisdiction and had no protection from discriminating against them. The leftist majority on the Supreme Court disagreed, holding that, as written, the 14th Amendment does not distinguish between legal immigrants and illegal aliens (“any person within its jurisdiction”).

On its face, this is a fallacious conclusion. The rules of statutory interpretation called “ejusdem generis” (of the same kind) means that, if there is a list in a statute, everything must be interpreted to comport with that list. In this case, the 14th Amendment is clearly talking about persons “born or naturalized in the United States.” Ejusdem generis means the phrase “any person within its jurisdiction” must refer to the larger group of persons who are born or naturalized.

However, for an activist Supreme Court, it just wasn’t fair that illegal alien children wouldn’t get a free education. (Really, that’s pretty much what it held, although with mushy socioeconomic analyses that are not in the Court’s actual purview.) Although the case technically applies only to K-12 education, leftists have pushed the principle to justify all sorts of welfare for illegal aliens.

We know that one of the primary reasons illegal aliens come is because they get free education for the children and, if they’re lucky, other welfare benefits. That’s rational behavior. I’d come too if that were offered to me.

The current Supreme Court should reverse the Plyler ruling because it’s manifestly wrong. But failing that (and I have no faith in this Court), we citizens need to move to amend the 14th Amendment to clarify that it covers only people in this country legally. Without the enticements of free stuff, America will instantly become less attractive to the many people who already live here illegally or intend to do so.

Image: A horde of military-age men lining up to enter America illegally. Twitter screen grab.